The ultimate guide to product building with the man who changed software

0:00but I'm like well what if what if you can make an ad that is the product what if ads could be the product like how could you get people to look at these things as as if that's the only thing they're there for um now great advertising is one thing but you know that there are very few great ads so anyway here's the idea so I think it could make a ton of money and literally there'd be almost nothing to do to make this thing happen except getting the word out and I think the word would spread so rapidly how much do you think about Mark

0:30when you think about an idea how much are you thinking about how am I going to get the first 100,000 people to download this uh I don't think about that at all for me it's like um is the idea any good I don't I think it is do I I don't know let's build something and see and then it it's like a a Goosebumps feeling like I think we're on to something that that to me is the best feeling in product development it's the feeling of I think we're on to something here but a lot of the a lot of it is the software industry is too serious it

1:01takes itself too seriously and I just would like to see some more people playing I'll say this I it feels like this idea of cozy software that you're talking about feels like one in one in 100 not 50 and 100 you know most software feels a bit boring right now I'd like to see more weird in software again yeah let's let's make the internet weird again yeah

1:30time baby I am so excited to have Jason freed someone I've looked up to for a very long time on the Pod Jason could be anywhere but he has chosen to spend his time with us thousands of people who love startup ideas and uh Builders and uh thanks for being here man yeah it's great to be here Greg thanks for having me on and I said you can only come on if you have an idea yeah yeah and your response was I've got something I can't get out of my head and uh so what's what's going through your head so I have had this idea for a

2:10number of years which I don't like actually I don't like it because I think it's good but it's ugly in a sense in that like I actually don't in a sense I don't want to see this idea in the world but there's something about it that seems so simple and that it would be so popular that I can't get out of my head so here's the idea first of all it's Advertising based which I don't like to begin with so the whole the whole premise of this I don't like okay you know scratch off tickets right uh you know little lottery tickets whatever right my my my kid my son loves

2:48that we get him every once in a while five bucks worth and scratch him off right and so it kind of hit me a number of years ago like that whole Act of scratching something off is a very fun thing it's one of the few like cheap mysteries in the world like like for a buck you can like you don't know what's going to happen it's very rare to find that these days so I I like this idea of scratching something off so I thought that you could make an app okay that is basically actually let me step back for a second I don't like ads and I don't

3:20like ads typically because they tend to be in the way they're always like in the way of what you actually want but I'm like well what if what if you can make an ad that is the product what if ads could be the product like how could you get people to look at these things as as if that's the only thing they're there for um now great advertising is one thing but you know that there are very few great ads so anyway here's the idea every day let's say at noon uh GMT this would be a global phenomenon perhaps it could be geolocated there could be

3:51different things in different places but the idea would be once a day you load up this app anytime you want during the day but it only resets once a day and there's ad so you load it up and there's a full screen ad like a tastefully done full screen ad could be video probably still just a start and it's sort of printed on this sort of gray substrate like a scratch off ticket right and you have to scratch it off you know with with your finger you got to scratch off the screen with your finger and the whole thing has to be scratched off before the next thing happens now what

4:22would be fun is the scratch off part like whenever you scratch off a real ticket there's always like these little remant of like crumbs of of the Silvery powdery whatever it is so I thought it'd be fun that you have to go like this into your microphone uh basically it would pick up the sound and it would like blow off the dust so you'd have to scratch it off and then go and this would be a thing like everybody in the world could do once a day right once you do that once it's all gone um there would be some sort of a pause and there

4:56would either be a coupon for the company that sponsored the ad or there'd be nothing just like when you scratch off a ticket like the chances the odds are very low but sometimes you get a free ticket sometimes you get a buck off a dollar$ three whatever it would be the company would decide what they would give to a maximum of five% of the people who who used it so this has to remain a long shot and a bit of a mystery and a bit of a I don't know what's going to happen today but um and you only get to do it once a day but I think you could

5:28get you could build something as simp as that and that would like kind of be it now you could have special interests you could have geographical things so in the United States you get a certain ad if you're somewhere else you get a different ad if you're into bikes you could get just bike advertisers like there's a whole bunch of things you could do here but it would be like in my opinion the simplest possible way to get the most people to look at one thing a day because they might get something behind the scenes and it's kind of also a fun mystery and the ad is the product

5:59and the blowing into the thing is sort of a fun thing and like that is it now I think this could be huge actually I think a lot of people would do it I think it could be like an international phenomenon kind of thing because it's so stupid and simple and like why not sh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated cont Concepts from entrepreneurs who built hundred million plus businesses I've compiled them into a one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but

6:45the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat sheet the idea bank is your startup shortcut just click click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you I don't know what the legal implications are of doing a scratch offy kind of thing but I like this idea that the phone it's like it has all the the elements it's it's touch screen you can move your finger you can blow into it and then it's a full screen ad and there's maybe something like a prize behind it um again I kind of don't

7:24want this to exist because I just don't like the idea of of like selling ads yeah but I think someone who didn't mind that could make this into something quite big and and interesting and uh and there's probably a lot of other things you could do with it so that's my that's my idea well Jason you came on the wrong pod to share an idea because these people will eat up this idea you're all of a sudden there's going to be like 25 seed funded startup Founders who are just going to go after this I mean think about if I'm making things up a 100 million people launch this app every day

8:00like I could totally imagine that happening because there's nothing to do but scratch something off and see if you want something so you could see this becoming this massive way to get people all to focus on their phone on this one ad um for you know 25 30 seconds a day um every day and you can imagine the ad inventory you could have and and how it could line up people could buy certain days that were special days that are like you could just imagine a whole ad sales team back back filling this with with with tons and tons of inventory so I think it could make a ton of money and

8:39literally there'd be almost nothing to do to make this thing happen except getting the word out and I think the word would spread so rapidly um and all I'm asking for is 1% that's all that's all you're that's all you're asking for just just Loop me in somehow somehow yeah but any what do you think of this so do you remember HQ trivia yes I do yes I do yes so Russ who's the founder of of HQ trivia he's a good friend of mine is a genius um and you know he was the co-founder of Vine before which essentially was Tik Tok he was like the host of of trivia as well

9:16right he was never the host he was the product you know co-founder and CEO uh the host was a guy named Scott rowski I think okay okay but I know what you're talking about I know I know the thing yeah what was brilliant about HQ trivia so the fact that to your point it happened at the same time every day people felt like they were a part of something bigger than themselves the commitment was pretty low like it didn't take very long you can do it with your friends and there was a variable reward to your point around maybe I can actually win whatever it is they're giving away I

9:58think what you're saying in a lot of a lot of ways is you're taking a lot of the mechanics that well like you know it actually came from to your yeah it actually came from scratch offs but that comes also from HQ trivia and you're applying it to a game um where the advertiser like the problem with HQ trivia was if you remember it was like first they're giving away 10,000 then 100,000 then a million they're raising ventor Capital to like subsidize it you're saying no no don't raise ventor Capital to subsidize it you're saying get advertisers yeah you don't need to have any cash you're not you're not there

10:35couldn't there wouldn't be any cash prizes there'd be some I think you could have all these creative prizes from The Advertiser who's advertising so it could be a coupon off it could I don't know what it could be there could be things they have to be very creative I'd love to see it be very creative but the advertiser who's going to get 100 million people or more to look at their ad for like you have to start with a full screen ad and you have to get rid of it um which is also kind of a a weird thing but like they are responsible for the prize

11:08for the distribution of the prize uh there is no like money to be given away and whoever would make this app would just be selling the ads basically and then they'd be in charge of getting more people to look at this every day um and the other thing I thought of would be your odds because I like I I like this this this idea and HQ trivia did this and I TV used to live TV used to do this which is like I I like that there'd be a schedule and that something would happen and you could imagine the whole planet stretching here but like picking up

11:38their phone at the same time doing this so my sense would be it'd be interesting to have time be a function of of um probability of winning so the closer you do it to the moment it goes live the higher the chance of you winning perhaps or something so if you do it at 7 p.m and it's let's say it goes up at noon you can imagine everyone kind of doing it at noon because like maybe their chances maybe they have a 3% better chance of winning or something like that the further off you go the less chance that that you have just to create this

12:09this moment uh for everybody across the world at the same time um to do this thing together there's another idea that my friend Scott Hyman do you know Scott Hyman very well s of meet up yeah very well so Scott and I talked about this idea a different idea but similar years and years and years and years ago which we talked about building which we didn't which is similar not to this ad thing but to this this scheduled uh internet experience thing which was um every day let's pick again pick noon GMT you'd go to a web page um now we had some weird ideas I'll

12:44share those in a minute but to make this weirder but let me the premise was everyone would go to the same web page and a video would play and it'd be a a video that would teach you how to do something it could be like candl making um uh how to sketch a room in proportion it could be a quick recipe it'd be a 3 minute Max video it would be on YouTube or or it wouldn't be on YouTube actually it wouldn't be on YouTube it would just be in this platform okay people could submit these and we'd have this ad this admin in the background going yeah that's a good idea

13:15no that's really well done whatever we'd have this big big thing it would play for three minutes and when you showed up it would start playing and it would play for from wherever you jumped in like live TV and then like if you came in 40 seconds later you're not seeing the beginning and there's no rewinding and there's no archive there's no way to look at this later if you missed it you missed it it's over you show up at the same time we serve this video out in real time and then it's over and then the remaining 24 or 23 hours and 57 minutes of the day there's basically an

13:48ad and some brand could buy the ad at that URL for the whole day they could have a whole website they could do a whole thing could be an entire website not just like a static ad but this idea again everyone shows up at the same time to learn something new together maybe you already know how to do it but it'd be kind of this fun thing and the rest of it's an ad but the weirder thing was we were going to say what if you did this at a new URL every single day and you you'd see the URL in different places and it' be sort of a mystery in a

14:17game and like an underground thing to figure out if you can find out where the URL is going to be for tomorrow's show essentially we thought that would be kind of fun anyway didn't do that either but it's the same kind of like having fun with with real time uh making a little bit of a mystery a little bit of a treasure hunt uh and not really knowing what's going to happen so I like that kind of stuff one of the things that you're saying which I think is really the future of the internet is adding opening hours and closed hours to apps yeah that's basically what you're

14:48saying so it's funny because when you know in the real world you know you can't go to your grocery store at 2:30 in the morning um it's closed um or you can go to your favorite breakfast restaurant at 900 p.m. it's closed but on the internet everything is so readily available and it's it's funny because I was talking to my wife last night we recently got like linear television you know we I don't know what that is like television we got like Cable cable TV cable got it yeah uhuh like things are on right now are on yes yeah things are on and I was talking to my wife and I

15:28was like wow this is amazing and she's like why is this amazing as I'm like you know I just put on Comedy Central I think it was and I was like because I don't need to do anything we're not going onto Netflix and then trying to like figure out oh within Netflix what do I need to watch making all the decisions so I think what you're saying is really interesting which is you kind of have to be there you kind of have to be there it's like a a great comedy show you're like oh you had to be there you know because it's all in the delivery there's

15:57something about that moment tied to that would be neat to have I mean this is a stupid Pro again another stupid idea but there's some there's something in it that I like which is speaking about your point about TV it'd be cool if there was a TV that you could buy maybe not cool it'd be dumb but let's imagine there's a TV you could buy that just had an on andof switch and no channels at all it just picked a random Channel every time you turned it on or off or on I should say so you turn on turn it off turn it on new channel turn

16:27it off turn on new channel you don't know what you're going to get but there's one button it's on or off each time it just serves up whatever the hell it wants in real time like it's a real legitimate cable channel but you don't know if it's going to be History Channel or some local public access or sports or whatever whatever it's going to be it's just going to be what it is and um I think that while these are obviously Novelties and not like that interesting there's something in that in itself would be like people wouldn't really use that it it'd be sort of again

17:00a novelty like a kind of a gag interesting Sideshow but given that everything is on demand everything's available to you all the time it'd be interesting I think um for there to be a few things on the internet um that are not that way that are right now only now not archived not saved if you miss it you miss it I like that I think that's kind of fun and there's probably a lot of other ideas that we could you know play with around that general idea and free you know and it's a free app right totally free this would be totally free I mean be the whole thing would be

17:31launch the app ad scratch it off blow it off right do you win or not don't know tomorrow I'll try again like free obviously um but I think it could be one of those things that just takes off it just has a virality to it that's um irritates me actually but but anyway may maybe something like this even exists I don't even know uh but I feel like if the right people did it the right way it could could definitely take off right well I think it's you have to channel your inner inner Russ you know right you either need to be Russ or you need to

18:07channel your inner inner Russ so what's Russ doing right now is Russ available honestly proba Pro probably he has like an incredible house you know and in like nature and he he he work you know he's got a few things going on but I think that for the right idea come out of hiding come hibernation he would he would come he's he's brilliant um I've got another idea okay here we go we got no no Jason please this is just opening up so I started on this idea a number of years ago never I got somewhere and then just didn't go anywhere I love drawing in the shower on a shower door

18:50or a glass uh shower door steam creates the shower or creates the what's interesting about drawing on a shower is that you're removing again it's like I like this idea of removing versus adding you know removing the scratch thing so you're you're drawing and and removing the Steam and I draw interfaces all the time on shower doors that's where a lot of my like product interface ideas come from I I I play up with it on the door and the reason I like it is because it's so ephemeral that you you sketch this thing and then 45 seconds later the steam cover it's gone it's like it's not

19:22there anymore so it's like this Perpetual idea board where I don't have to erase anything it doesn't matter there's nothing that's that it's um precious about it it's just temporary just like the shower I'm not in there that long 10 minutes 15 minutes whatever screwing around like great so I'm like how can i s but but there's something about the white noise and the the the temp the the temporal or temporary nature of it that that I like and the removal so had this idea to basically have an iPad app um you launch it steamy shower immediately just steams up okay it doesn't launch steamed up it launches

19:59clear and then steams up within a second or two to kind of have the effect if you put on headphones you're going to hear shower noise so you're going to hear like water you don't have to have headphones you don't have to use the audio part but if you do you're you're in the shower very relaxing and you just draw and it fogs back up perhaps now I I wouldn't V1 would be that's it you're done if you like something you drew take a screenshot there's no like save it's just that's it it's a Perpetual refreshing sketchboard basically uh made of fake steam now you could imagine there's a setting

20:38somewhere where you could change the the you know the steam uh resteam duration or whatever but no don't want any of that I love like what's the simplest possible version of this load it up steam draw goes away you're done like it screenshot It Whatever put on headphones there's sound if you don't there's no sound maybe there's sound without headphones I think it'd be cool though if it only worked with headphones like you it wouldn't just play through the speaker I don't know if that's even possible but it'd be kind of interesting to really have to feel like you're really in it so that's another idea

21:08again based on these like the simplest possible version of something is always really interesting and entertaining the reason I started building this with someone i' hired an iOS Developer and frankly I'd like to still do this so if someone out there wants to do this with me let's do it I'd like to do it the the thing we ran into was simulating it it has to be good the steam part and the feel of running your finger over it and sometimes you get a few drips and sometimes you don't like I want that to be so realistic and I feel like I need to work with someone who like knows how

21:42to render stuff realistically in that way um and um person's working with she was great but like it just it we didn't really get far enough and that was it just kind of faded away but I'd love to do this I'd love to do this because I want this to exist in the world it'd be free again um I'd like shower door I don't know what the hell we call it um shower sketch Ste steam steam wand I don't know what it would be but but but that's what it would be so if if you're out there and you want to do this show me that you can

22:11somehow I was going to say that's what I was going to say like I don't want a bunch of emails from people like because that happens you have to be world class at this um but I yeah sorry go ahead no I was just going to say you have to be this needs to be a problem that you a inherently understand and you you could you can picture it and you have the skill set to and have ideally done something similar before um so that you're not spending a year trying to figure this out yeah there's like so little to it but there's a lot to it the

22:46app does like nothing basically but the the the the nothing that it does needs to be just so right to feel as natural as it would to really draw on a steamy shower door I know someone could pull this off I'd love to support it and make it happen uh I would use it all the time one of the things that bugs me about sketching apps is how permanent they are I know you can delete and the whole thing but like there's just tools there's tools everywhere I I don't want any of that I just want a surface and I want to go away and if I like what I did I'll save

23:24it with a screenshot that's enough yeah what I'm what I'm picking up on well actually before I say what I'm picking up on what you're describing to me is what I call the Margarita Pizza problem which is a margarita pizza of course it's so simple it's just dough and tomato sauce and cheese but you know the difference between the best margarita slice you've had and Domino's Pizza not not hating on dominoes because Domino you know has its place in in society as well but um you know it's not like you're eating a slice and Naples um so that's what you're saying with with your product like it needs to

24:03be Naples not dominoes and by the way in the comment section I know what we're going to get people saying oh why you why you talking smack about Domino's Pizza like domino Domino's the right time is is the perfect choice there you go um as as this thing would be the perfect thing to reach for when when you want to be in that mode you know and there'll be many times when I I would use a sketching app for other reasons you know so this is all about the Domino's moment the the the shower dorm moment um this idea at least you know uh but yeah I think it I think it's it's

24:39actually surprisingly hard to pull off well quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest compan companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you out rank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in

25:18Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com that's what we realized as we got into it and part of it is um even just the the the finger dynamics of like there's something so in in the analog world things do what they do like you put your fingertip on something and it's the the drawing is going to be the same exact thickness as your fingertip because that's it's analog

25:57it's your fingertip that's literally removing so whatever your contact point if you press harder it's thicker if you press lighter it's less right if you use your fingernail uh you can get a thinner line like there there's there's and we couldn't quite get there with the touchscreen Dynamics at the time maybe we didn't know how maybe we weren't able to maybe that's this has been a number of years now maybe it's changed but it'd be really nice to have pressure sensitivity and have it really truly detect the outline of your finger and make sure that that would make the the removal of the steam precisely that much

26:33so so there's just no uncanny valley here it's like it is be it behaves exactly as the real thing would if anyone out there goes I love that kind of thing and I know I can absolutely do that please reach out maybe I'll regret saying that but I'd love I'd really love to see this work yeah how much do you think about marketing when you think about an idea how much do you think about about how am I going to get the first 100,000 people to download this uh I don't think about that at all for me it's like um is the idea any good I don't I think it is

27:08do I I don't know let's build something and see and then it's like a a Goosebumps feeling like I think we're on to something that that to me is the best feeling in product development it's the feeling of I think we're on to something here we're working on a current product right now which I I can't share many details about but um we just played with an idea it's so hard to be so abstract here but we we play with an idea around images that in this category of product this is not an invention of a new category it's an existing category but in this category images are not

27:45typically part of the vernacular we found a way to make images like first class citizens in this category and it's super unusual and weird but like when you do it you go oh we're there's we're on to something here there's something here that that's what I think about is finding those there's something here moments and then I always feel like I've managed to build up a large audience on some on Twitter and Linkedin let's say and and and maybe a few other places I feel like I can get the word out and I feel like if it's any good other people will then get the word out

28:29so my my interest is not in how do I Market this it's how do I make this really good that it will Market itself as best it can not everything can do that some things Spike and then die you know so you have to have some sort of something that's going to carry it over the long term and and these kind of ideas I think that the the scratch off one I think could carry it itself because it's one of those things like people would tell other people about and there there might be some other ways to make it more viral like hey if you tell

28:58someone else about this we're going to increase your odds by you know 1% like there's a million ways you could game that which is again why I kind of don't like it it's like pure gaming in a sense it's like pushing every gaming lever button switch you could and I'm sure you could do that the the um the shower door thing is more like it' be a very Niche super Niche thing I don't care if 600 people use it I don't care if 18 people use it I want it I'd be happy if I'm the only one who finds it interesting at all um and so I don't really care about that

29:30you know that's like a personal passion project for me that actually just got me thinking of a whole other idea which is what do you got okay what if there were limited limited edition apps so just like how there's vintage cars and there's only like a thousand of this one model of Porsche let's say this shower app could be like one of a thousand and it just could be an expensive app you know what's funny um I think someone tried to do this though years ago it was like a fart app that was like a thousand bucks or something and apple and it was like that that was

30:11the novelty you know and apple like said no you you can't charge a thousand bucks for this or something like that but I do I don't know um I know with with test flight I think you can of course limit the number of downloads or however that works but I don't think you can do that with the App Store in general so I don't know how you do that but I like I like this idea um and there's things you could say well you'd have to enter a code but Apple would not allow you there's a lot of things Apple wouldn't let you do there maybe on Android you

30:37could do that um I like I like the spirit of that people aren't on Android realistically like the person you know I I think it h it would have to be iOS I mean some some apps are just going to naturally be limited by their demand it's like right most people go like I'm not what a sketch thing that's like Steam and I can't save anything and goes away like what that's like so that might naturally you know maybe there are 900 people in the world who find that interesting but no I like I like the idea of um I mean it's kind of what we've been talking about at a different

31:08level which is this idea of um limits like the real time limit like you're either there when it happens you had to be there or it didn't happen yes uh and this would be you know you either got it I mean one thing you could do actually um you can put something in the App Store I believe and then discontinue it uh and then it would just stay on people's phones I don't think that it's deleted I know we I think almost certainly that's how that works unless Apple's changed those rules but I think there was a time when that was true uh maybe it's still true so you could like

31:41dis this is how uh like high-end watch brands um create a collector's Market they'll make a limited number of watches it won't necessarily be a limited edition sometimes there are limited editions there's many of those but like pect Philipe for example will make a watch for six years or for four years and then just discontinue it so it wasn't it wasn't like we're going to make a thousand and dis it's like we're going to make this and we're going to decide at some point that there's enough out there and we're going to support the collector Community by making sure that this will never be made again and then

32:11will hold value or whatever so you could just discontinue things not go into them with limited edition ideas but just discontinue when you're done go enough people have grabbed this enough people have downloaded this we're done um it'd be cool though if there was like some sort of secondhand Mark trading Market for for apps you can't get anymore totally I don't know how that would work I don't think you could do that but um there's some fun stuff in there in 201 14 or 15 we had a really popular app but it got Acquired and got shut down it was this video discovery app uh it was

32:46called five by and it was shut down and our team this is around the time when Flappy Bird was really popular so we we skinned Flappy Bird so that when you open up the 5 by app post it closing down it it turned into Flappy Bird but with our logos and our branding and yeah so you didn't have to download a new version of the app it just wow and and people like Ryan Hoover and all these people were going into the app and Ryan wrote like a whole blog post about it yeah um and and it was so funny like it went viral like millions of people

33:26you know millions of impressions people were trying to get their hold on apps there's something here and I think like the genius of everything you're saying like to summarize is the real world has a lot of ideas for how to develop a product that's going to work because you mentioned time you mention um like surprise treasure hunts you know a lot of the stuff you're saying ephemerality a lot of the stuff you're saying is hey this is happening in the real world and I wonder if this could happen in software yeah I I think there's uh I mean it's you might say like well it happens in

34:03it's happening in the real world that's great the internet's different or software is different why it shouldn't happen here it's not like fit to happen here but I think I think there's I think there's some sort of deeper Universal things to tap into here like mystery surprise uncertainty um uh moments like this is happening in this moment and then it's not happening anymore this this is what makes things valuable in a lot of ways like that that they're not always on demand that like you know you go somewhere and then you leave and like you're not there anymore and they could only experience the thing when you were there you can take a video

34:38and pictures but you know they're never the same they remind you to some degree but you can never really be there it's like it's like being you know I don't know the Grand Canyon like there is no photograph that actually represents the Grand Canyon every photograph the best photograph is purely an abstraction um because when you're there there the the volume the size the the the the um the scope of the thing leaves an impression that is impossible to capture in pixels it just you cannot and there's other things like that I mean like love is like that like there's all these other things that where these are

35:16feelings that can't be captured and that's kind of partially what makes them really really special uh and um you can't we're not I'm not suggesting that we that you can do that necessarily digit but there's there's some variations of that that I think would be fun to play with and I'd also just like to see and this is not fair because there there are there's plenty of like fun software but a lot of the a lot of it is the software industry is too serious it takes itself too seriously and I just would like to see some more people playing with software playing with ideas in these ways not like creating games

35:49games are fun obviously but not about the game mechanics so much but just like conceptual ideas uh like the like the the um shower door stuff is like more about playing with something it's it's it's it's an idea that you're trying to simulate that's sort of not like a flight simulator where it's like you're trying to do something very complicated in a sense but just trying to actually simulate something very simple um I don't know maybe there are plenty of things like that there might be just like even sound apps or something that just like recreates the sound of nature these things exist whatever so it's not

36:23like I'm I'm I'm not saying anything super novel here but I'd like to see more of those kinds of things out there in the world what have you seen recently of a piece of software that has had a little bit of fun that you're like whoa these people they're on you know this is interesting like have you had a lot of you know is software boring now or or or or are you seeing stuff that's exciting you I'm trying to find an app um I think I may have deleted it there's some company um maybe you'll know who who they are they make like timers and

36:57like really fun typographical things that are like super simple things that just look really fun and look really cool I can't remember what they're called now um there's also there's some company called like something so gosh like it was like simple software or like unnecessary I forget what the name of the company was but they're making really cool apps that really are just like you already have a timer but this timer is like more fun you know that kind of thing you know to be honest I I think um this is maybe not where you're going with the question but but um we recently bought um we actually

37:31traded so we had a Jeep Wrangler and we traded for a a Land Rover and so I had a very traditional experience at a car dealership which was like a bad experience it's like four hours of sitting around and paperwork and going to the finance office and it's like there was nothing fun about that except getting the car was fun but the rest of it was just bad experience and then we we recently just traded um we had an Audi rron which we're trading for Tesla that experience has been fun and actually it's there are few very very few things in this world I think that

38:05are truly like night and day within the same industry I don't know if you've bought a Tesla or been through the experience but it is a night and day fundamentally different experience you do everything through your phone it's actually fun and interesting to see like where you're at when your car is going to be delivered and you don't really know and they give you a date and then you fill out some more stuff and someone texts you and there's excitement like it's actually a fun thing and there's no paperwork It's All Digital it's super simple uh there's no like Finance guy trying to sell you you know the upsells

38:37and the wheel entire pack it's like it's just actually like a fun experience and it's not like the software is fun but the experience is actually fun especially in contrast to what else exists this is something that I I really admire about them and something we've tried to do in our products is to try to make them feel cozy and comfortable in a way that I find a lot of software to be very clinical and cold especially like modern design Aesthetics a lot of stuff just feels very cold and clinical um so I think you can bring a little bit of like this feels warm so it's not necessarily fun but

39:19there's a warmth to it which I think is is cool to see um there was that one app or that one game years ago maybe it still exists it's like that sort of skiing game where you kind of hold your finger down and you yep I forget what it's called beautiful absolutely beautiful simple artfully done the whole thing is just was so wonderful and maybe still is that's one of the last experiences I've had using software and this is a number of years ago where I felt like one person made this just to Delight people anyway I'd love to see more of that and less like

39:57how big could this be and you know yada y y even though the idea I was sharing earlier I feel it could be big and gamed and the whole thing but um I think it says something that we can't come up with like a hundred apps quickly you know both you and I create software uh involved in software I've been in in it for a while but we can't off the top of our head be like here's the 20 different things you know I think it's it's it feels like I'll say this it feels like this idea of cozy software that you're talking about feels like one

40:30in one in 100 not 50 and 100 you know most software feels a bit boring right now I think boring is a good word for a lot of stuff actually and it's unfortunate like you have these incredible little hand computers and or or laptops whatever like whatever is what I feel like is missing and again this is maybe like the the old guy coming back and talking about how it used to be right I don't want to be that but there does seem to be a um a hobbyist ethos which seems to be missing in a lot of software it used to be more of the hobbyist like almost surprising

41:08themselves with the fact that they made something that works I was like awesome and it's in that that this thing works this is great like it's totally quirky and weird and I made it for myself and maybe you can use it Vibe which was like the vibe uh like share wear and all the stuff that happened before the internet um and early days the internet too um and early websites and early personal blogs like that kind of stuff there was a there was definitely an era of hobbyists fun exploration we don't know what this thing is yet and I think what ends up happening is that as as you

41:39begin to understand what something is some of that fun leaks out of the bottom it's just like you you know it too well now and you it's it there's less of um an explorers mentality it'd probably be like if you were to go go to a piece of land in the mountains that you've never been to the first time is like wow you go back three or four more times there's more wow because you discover new parts to it but if you've been back 15 20 30 times you know it too well now and there's no more surprises left I mean there could be a like an owl

42:14could fly by or some like you know whatever there could be other things but but you're you go there with a sense of like I know this now and because I know this I'm not expecting to be surprised there's that awe is sort of missing and I and I feel like the software industry is sort of in some ways become that um and I would say you know in our minds at 37 signals we're actually we've been pretty conscious of this lately last few months specifically actually been talking about this more internally and we're trying to make some really sort of weirder things um so um I'd like to see

42:49more weird in software again yeah let's let's make the internet weird again yeah or let's make the internet weird period not even an again you know yeah it's funny like when you run into the yeah true it doesn't need to be again it can just be I mean it is weird like there of course are Corners where it's like super Weir I saw um a link yesterday someone sent me I don't know like I think I saw it on um Jason cocky's blog or something um which is there's a website that you can only visit once oh I like of course you can clear your cookies and like

43:20right but but basically you can't it sort of sets a cookie it's like you've already seen this um and and I I think that's kind of interesting you know again like it's not commercial who cares like enough with the everything has to be an asset like everything's become an asset class versus like just it's quirky and weird so I I like that idea like you visit a website once or you again the website only works for three minutes a day or or that kind of stuff I'd love to see more that and I'm sure there's a lot of that in in the edges of the internet uh but

43:54um it'd be neat to have more people run into that so doesn't have to be so super esoteric and only a handful of people maybe so yeah absolutely yeah Jason I know what I'm doing this weekend making things weird making things weird I'm making things weird I I this is uh inspired me to to look through to yeah just to to put out some weirder stuff and see what happens I love this idea around effem morality and time-based apps I think the idea I actually really love your uh your scratch off idea and the blowing you know that blowing idea on top of it come on that was awesome

44:37that's the extra Spirit of it that I think's important also I'm actually been surprised frankly um that there's not more done in that way I think there's of course there's like you you know um motion sensing and you know and game controllers there's some of that but like blow blowing into it or shaking it or like tapping it in a way that I I don't know like what I don't know enough about what's possible but I know certainly you can pick up audio on the microphone and and you could probably pick up decibel levels perhaps so like a harder blow would blow things harder that that kind of thing I'd like to see

45:10some more experimentation there it'd be really fun uh to see that so yeah please make some stuff and if anyone wants to make any of this stuff and like you really want to do it let me know you you don't need my permission by the way obviously these are ideas we're sharing openly here but um I'm going I'm going to call these guys out cuz I'm actually going for dinner at the co-founders house in a few hours there is a fun software studio in Paris that are called ammo Amo and Amo and they will put on YouTube what their apps are but they have some motion apps it's a it's I

45:46don't know if you remember this app called zeny it was like a location based tracker kind of like a find your friends but you can like send stickers and there was messaging on top of it they sold to Snapchat for like two 250 $300 million and now they've gone in same team basically have gone and created a social Studio where they they're iterating on three or four social apps and a lot of them one is like a photo app that as you move it you can the photo is different and you can see you know different parts of it that's cool and they're pushing the edge

46:17on a bunch of different things there and they've also recreated their zenly app um and it's starting to get traction so I think um yeah I guess it's coming out of Paris it's coming out of probably you know these things exist there is some weird stuff it's just at the edges absolutely and one of the mistake you don't ever want to make is like making this mistake that if I don't know it it doesn't exist like that's such an EG centered way of looking at the world like all I know is what I know there's so much more I don't know so many of these ideas we might be talking about

46:49someone else is sitting there in the another corner of the world going I already made this don't you know about this there's like a billion people using this thing so all the stuff could already happen and already exists and if it does wonderful I'm so glad to hear it I'd love to hear about what it is I love to be exposed to it um so yeah our own world everyone's world are quite small um so maybe maybe the internet is still very very weird in a lot of ways um and maybe there are all sorts of fun apps and things that we don't know about that

47:17would be cool to explore but I have not seen the shower door app I want to make that and I and um and the scratch off thing would be fun to do I just don't want to build a sales team it's like not my not my thing totally Jason where could people learn more about 37 signals and and and and you well you can go to 37 signals.com that's the number 37 signals.com basecamp.com hey.com our products we make once is another thing we're doing now on c.com which is another like kind of playful idea maybe uh in software these days and then um I'm mostly on um on Twitter SLX

47:55my name Jason free fed or on LinkedIn you can find me there uh that's pretty much it and my email address is public you can find it you can email me um and uh let's see what happens amazing thanks Jason this is great Greg thanks so much this is really fun later [Music]